The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) documented record-high coca cultivation and cocaine production throughout 2021 in its 2023 World Drug Report, released on Monday.
The vast majority – some estimates suggest as much as 80 percent – of the world’s cocaine is produced in Colombia. Following a “peace deal” between the Colombian government and the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016 that granted the terrorist organization seats in the Colombian Congress and limited law enforcement operations against coca cultivation, cocaine production has surged. The UNODC noted on Monday that 2021, the year covered in the 2023 report, was the seventh in a row in which cocaine production increased year-on-year. The FARC peace talks began in 2014.
International observers fear that cocaine production in Colombia may surge even further since the advent of Gustavo Petro becoming president last year. Petro, a former member of the Marxist M-19 terrorist guerrilla, has openly defended cocaine as a relatively safe drug and deemed it less dangerous to humanity than fossil fuels. Petro is attempting to launch peace talks with the second-largest narco-terror group in Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and has called for the implementation of a plan dubbed “total peace” that would significantly limit Bogotá’s anti-cocaine operations.
The UNODC published its report on Monday in observance of “World Drug Day,” calling for “respect and empathy” towards drug users.
“On the supply side, coca bush cultivation covered 315,500 ha in 2021, representing a marked increase from 2020, and total cocaine production reached 2,304 tons, which was the seventh consecutive year-on-year increase,” Monday’s report, which covers 2021, documented. “Both are record highs.”
“The world is currently experiencing a prolonged surge in both supply and demand of cocaine, which is now being felt across the globe,” the report continued, “and is likely to spur the development of new markets beyond the traditional confines.and trafficking, and natural resource exploitation.”
The UNODC warned that drug traffickers are developing “more efficient supply chains” by cooperating more smoothly across continents. While coca leaf, used to make cocaine, is native to South America and cocaine is most popular there, the UNODC documented a marked rise in trafficking of the drug into Western and Central Europe.
The United Nations expressed particular concern over the Amazon Basin, a region covering Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia, as growing coca and producing cocaine out of sight of authorities fuels environmental destruction.
“It takes more than 300 litres of gasoline to produce 1 kilogram of cocaine,” the report observed, “with legacy impacts ranging from water pollution to soil degradation, which have implications for both animal and human health.”
“The direct impact of coca cultivation on deforestation is minimal but indirectly it can act as a catalyst for deforestation, although the deforestation observed in the Amazon Basin is largely driven by other factors,” the report relayed. “’Narco-deforestation’ – the laundering of drug trafficking profits into land speculation, the agricultural sector, cattle ranching and related infrastructure – is posing a growing danger to the world’s largest rainforest.”
“Cocaine production and trafficking are surging,” it continued, noting that this was especially true in four Colombian departments (regions): Caquetá, Guaviare, Meta, Putumayo and Vichada in Colombia. The rehabilitated FARC, split between its “legitimate” faction in Congress and the still-operative guerrilla fighters often referred to incorrectly as “dissidents,” was largely to blame for the expansion of that trade. According to the United Nations, FARC terrorists and other drug traffickers “subcontract timber companies and smugglers who conceal drugs in the hulls of boats and transport them from ports.” The FARC in particular, it continued, maintained some friendly relations with other drug gangs – especially Brazil’s two largest, the First Capital Command (PCC) and the Red Commands (CV) – that allow them to sell their product to distributors who can reach many more customers.
The United Nations estimated that Colombian cocaine reached markets in 64 countries in 2021.
A major difference between the 2022 World Drug Report and the edition published on Monday regarding cocaine is that the U.N. did not document a significant increase in the amount of land that drug traffickers were using in 2020 to grow coca. The significant increase in cocaine production, that report concluded, was the result of more efficient development of crop lands. Nonetheless, the 2022 report noted a significant increase in production and cultivation since the FARC peace deal.
“The area under coca bush cultivation in Colombia more than tripled during peace negotiations with FARC-EP, then decreased after the peace agreement was concluded in November 2016,” the report found. “In 2020, despite productive areas under coca bush cultivation decreasing by 9 percent, compared with the previous year, potential cocaine manufacture in Colombia rose by 8 percent, to 1,228 tons, owing to increased yields and higher laboratory efficiency rates.”
Petro’s arrival to the presidency a year ago, the first leftist president in the history of Colombia, has generated increased fears in an even larger cocaine boom than that already occurring. Petro has fed those concerns by defending cocaine at international venues. During his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, for example, Petro asserted that cocaine only causes “minimal deaths” and condemned operations to eradicate the drug.
“To destroy the coca plant they release poisons, glyphosate en masse that runs through the waters. They arrest their growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, a million Latin Americans are murdered and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America,” he railed. “‘Destroy the plant that kills,’ they cry from the north [the United States], but the plant is just one more plant among the millions that perish when they unleash fire onto the jungle.”
“What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil?” he asked. “The opinion of [those in] power has commanded that cocaine is the poison and must be persecuted, even if it only causes minimal deaths by overdose, and more by the mixtures created as a result of its clandestine state. But, instead, coal and oil must be protected, even if their use can extinguish all mankind.”
In July, prior to Petro’s U.N. speech, a group of Colombian lawmakers led by Senator Gustavo Bolívar, of Petro’s Humane Colombia Party, signed a letter urging the government to decriminalize cocaine, among other drugs. Bolívar announced a plan to “regulate the use of coca leaf, poppy, mushrooms, and its derivatives for adult and medicinal use.” Bolívar specifically mentioned the legalization of cocaine and did not exclude any derivatives from the plants listed despite the extremely dangerous derivates produced from poppy – for example, heroin or fentanyl.
Luis Carlos Reyes, the head of Colombia’s National Directorate of Taxes and Customs under Petro, called for the legalization of cocaine in October with a post on Twitter stating, “time to legalize and tax.”